I smoked M lights as my first then within a year I was smoking camel menthol silvers and I thought I would never I began not getting the high from the camels anymore so I seen the blacks come out and I am not a fan of reds they stink awful they make me have headaches and they make me feel like I have TB from the amount of coughing involved. I tried a Black Red 100 and I was in love been smoking them a little over a year now. i recommend this cig over any on the market for smooth and strong qualities. They are less smoky smelling and have a sweet taste and smell. Whatever you do dont smoke the black greens they are nasty in my opinion the menthols is like a watered down menthol taste. But Marborol has outdone themselves on the Black Reds I give it 10 stars

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The secret and soul of marlboro

Long before the widespread use of freebasing, tobacco industry scientists knew that nicotine deliveries were sensitive to pH manipulation (by adding acids or bases). Several documents from the 1930s and 1940s discuss how to reduce the amount of free nicotine in tobacco by adding an organic acid, which would combine with the free nicotine base to form a (bound) nicotine salt.37 Free (vs &#x0201c combined&#x0201d ) nicotine in those early years was often characterized as &#x0201c toxic,&#x0201d 38 which made sense at a time prior to the push to reduce tar and nicotine in the &#x0201c filter wars&#x0201d and &#x0201c tar derby&#x0201d of the 1950s and 1960s. Many other industry documents from this earlier period describe the well known art of denicotinization, which often used a base (such as ammonia) and steam to remove the offending alkaloid from tobacco. Denicotinization involves some of the same processes as freebasing, although the desired outcomes are different. Denicotinization involves the application of gaseous ammonia so that, upon addition of steam, the nicotine can be removed freebasing impregnates tobacco with a salt (such as DAP) so that ammonia is released when the cigarette is lit, making nicotine more available to the smoker.

Tobacco chemists knew enough to freebase nicotine as early as the 1930s and 1940s,39 but there was little reason then to manipulate cigarettes in this manner. Smoking was not yet widely accepted as a cause of lung and heart disease,40 and most people still smoked cigarettes yielding very high levels of tar and nicotine. Only beginning with the &#x0201c health scare&#x0201d of the 1950s, and with increasing urgency in the 1960s and 1970s, did Philip Morris and the other manufacturers scramble to appease a rattled public by marketing cigarettes with lower levels of tar and nicotine, which is where the value of ammoniation came in.

It is difficult to say whether Philip Morris scientists expected diammonium phosphate to increase the availability of free nicotine in its new version of Marlboro, introduced in the mid 1950s. After all, the compound was largely being used as a pectin releaser and flavorant in reconstituted tobacco. Philip Morris chemists were, however, experts in pH manipulation, as were chemists more generally. Freebasing was not an unknown phenomenon, but there was not yet a practical need for it in the cigarette business.

In 1962, a Philip Morris study found diammonium phosphate products delivering 0.57 mg of nicotine per cigarette versus 0.44 mg in untreated tobaccos.41 Keenly aware of the increasing demand for cigarettes low in nicotine,42 Philip Morris later used its patented DAP BL process to give its &#x0201c low yield&#x0201d Merit brand an edge over its competitors. Merit cigarettes boasted a total nicotine yield (measured by Federal Trade Commission machines) only half of that found in Marlboros, but still managed to make available the same amount of free nicotine to smokers (about 0.33 mg in both instances). Brown and Williamson scientists reflected on this in 1980, commenting that &#x0201c in theory a person smoking these cigarettes Merit and Marlboro would not find an appreciable difference in the physiological satisfaction from either based on the amount of free nicotine delivered.&#x0201d 43

This was not the first time Brown and Williamson had pondered the value of freebasing. Its parent company, British American Tobacco, in the mid 1960s had recognized along with Philip Morris that the &#x0201c strength&#x0201d or &#x0201c impact&#x0201d of a cigarette was related not to the total nicotine content of the smoke but rather to the amount of &#x0201c extractable&#x0201d or &#x0201c free&#x0201d nicotine, which varied significantly with smoke pH.44 Brown and Williamson in 1971 had given the code name UKELON to urea, an ammonia source that the company recognized as &#x0201c a way of achieving normal impact from low tar cigarettes.&#x0201d 45 The same company&#x02019 s &#x0201c Project LTS&#x0201d (low &#x0201c tar&#x0201d satisfaction) acknowledged that free (un protonated) nicotine was &#x0201c more readily absorbed and thus has a decidedly satisfying effect on the smokers&#x02019 taste receptors.&#x0201d The goal of LTS was a cigarette containing &#x0201c greater levels of &#x02018 free&#x02019 nicotine&#x0201d in &#x0201c an enhanced alkaline environment.&#x0201d 46 By 1980, the company had concluded that &#x0201c we have sufficient expertise available to &#x02018 build&#x02019 a lowered mg tar cigarette which will deliver as much &#x02018 free nicotine&#x02019 as a Marlboro, Winston or Kent without increasing the total nicotine delivery above that of a &#x02018 Light&#x02019 product.&#x0201d 47

Apart from DAP BL recon, Philip Morris experimented with other kinds of ammonia technology. As early as 1957, for example, the company came up with the economically unfeasible &#x0201c New Idea No. 46&#x0201d 48 to &#x0201c soak stems in liquid ammonia,&#x0201d imparting to them greater &#x0201c protein like&#x0201d material and &#x0201c those properties now being produced by the aqueous NaOH, by virtue of its basic nature.&#x0201d 49 The ammonia was difficult to recycle, however, and the idea was quickly abandoned. A 1966 progress report on &#x0201c nicotine and smoke pH&#x0201d discussed the results of adding ammonium carbonate and oxalic acid to tobacco and concluded that nicotine deliveries could be &#x0201c controlled via filler or smoke pH adjustment.&#x0201d 50 Throughout this time, from the mid 1960s through the 1970s and 1980s, the company kept a close eye on the pH levels of its major brands.51